Berenika Zemanová
Tribulations of a Theatre Entrepreneur at the Height of the Gründer Era: Director C. J. Bertalan on the Situation of Provincial Theatres in Cisleithania
This paper deals with the theatre business in Austria-Hungary at the end of the Gründerzeit from the perspective of a theatre director in a medium-sized city. Carl Joseph von Bertalan's Das Provinz?Theater. Skizzen über die kleinen (halbjährigen) Bühnen in Österreich ('The Provincial Theatre: Sketches on the small stage with a six-month run in Austria'; 1870) gives an engaging account of the deteriorating conditions in which such a business was compelled to operate, caused in part by social and political changes, but above all by insufficient legislative oversight and, in von Bertalan's final account, by the devastating onset of the operetta, i.e. entertainment theatre.
Keywords: theatre business - provincial theatre - urban theatre - operetta - entertainment theatre - Vienna stock market crash
design by Bedřich Vémola
